How the Pandemic Highlighted Problems in the Supply Chain for Beauty Professionals

Shannon, my client. 2019

In the beauty industry we strive for consistency in every aspect of our career. We need consistency in order to produce beautiful works of art and continue to give that to our clients. As we know, 2020 has been a tough year for most industries. The beauty industry was hit with a lack of support for salons after shutting down for an extended time, a recession affecting the public’s ability to support beauty businesses, and seeing a decrease in inventory from our favorite brands.

The days of “praying to the hair gods'' have been increasing, it seems, with the supply chain still feeling the effects from the pandemic year and everyone stretching their back bar. It doesn’t seem like there’s really an end to the delays and current shortages of color, hair products, and other beauty essentials since apologies from retailers and manufacturers are still posted everyday. 

As stated before, we strive for consistency because we cannot do our job fully without it; the right amount of color for a full head, the texture spray that works best for updos, or even anything as simple as sectioning clips. When the supply chain is interrupted, our business is interrupted as well. 

Here are some of the factors that play into delays in receiving inventory:

Packaging

Manufacturers that provide the packaging for products are still behind and becoming increasingly more expensive to make. It’s more than just bottles and containers, it’s the design behind it as well. These packaging might be beautiful, but how many of them do we really need? They are big, bulky, take up a lot of room, and take more time and energy to make. The more needed to make this packaging, the longer it’ll take to get the products that you want and need to get to you.

Shipping 

Why should the USPS care if you get your package in time? Now with the influx of online shopping, it’s gotten more difficult for them to do their job without the extra help or pay they need to complete requests. It shows that ordering from companies that are further away or have less distribution centers is harder to get supplies in the time you’d prefer. As an example (yet maybe not a fair one), Amazon has shown that having more warehouses has helped with getting your orders to you in a more timely and efficient manner.

Production

To expand on the last paragraph, having one or few locations to cater to a larger crowd is (in my opinion) an extreme waste. Think of it like this: the company is putting all their eggs in one basket. If something happens to the location, the whole process is disrupted. It could be a global pandemic where only half of the workers can come to work (safely), a fire could break out and destroy the whole operation, if they’re using more natural ingredients and something happens to their crops, and the list goes on. Plus, the more decentralized the company is, the more opportunities there are for communities.

What can we take away from this? 

The system that is currently running is not sustainable, generally and environmentally.

What changes need to be made?

We need to have more decentralized options, meaning that companies should have more localized operations. This does not mean bigger companies have to shrink and smaller companies need funding to rise to the occasion necessarily - but it does mean that future investments should be made to progress that. From the products, to packaging, to shipping, and everything in between. 

What does that look like for:

Packaging

Less individual bottles and more bulk options. I’ve noticed quite a few brands such as L’Occitane and Keune that offer “refill” options, where they package bags of product to fill up the container they have been using. 

Manufacturers could also switch to investing into 3D printers, where they can produce their packaging and use recycled material (even their own bottles) to make them. You don’t have to ship in materials and use extra energy to transport bottles and containers in, you can have production anywhere you want it to be. You can print product bottles anywhere that has access to electricity and room for a printer. Even the retailers. How much closer to home could you get?

Shipping

The closer products are made to home, the quicker you will get them. Pretty simple. Plus saves money on shipping.

Production

As more cosmetics are taking the “non-toxic” route, more agricultural practices and natural ingredients will be needed to fill the space of other chemicals. Planted Detroit uses vertical farming and a controlled atmosphere to grow their products, right in the city of Detroit. This is a huge step for the food and crop industry, but also big for us as well because that means we can truly grow anything just about anywhere, making it easy to create quality cosmetics closer to you (probably less expensive).

As these are just thoughts and opinions that I have for the industry’s supply chain, we see other companies and businesses already trying out some of these practices. In the fires of distress, people band together to make the unthinkable happen. That is where we are at now, figuring out how to grow from here. I think we can do it if we really want it to.